Hi girls - What an eventful and dramatic party day today. It started Saturday:

My friend so graciously offered to come help cook party food. We got it all done including the fantastic number "4" cake. Will post pics later. After all the cooking and making and icing the cake it was 1am. My friend left and the kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off so I cleaned everything and fell into bed at 3.30am!!! Sunday I get up and weather is weird, sunny, then rain, then wind! Our little gazebo we put up kept blowing over. Kids arrive, we play lots of fun games, it rains, then stops, kids keep running out to play then back in when it rains, but they are having fun. The drama starts about 4.30pm when DH gets Marley up to feed her.

I am outside playing, when my GF comes and says Marley is getting really red and itchy. I come inside and take one look at her and freak out. She is scarlet red all over her body with big white dots and she has it all over and her face is starting to turn red. My other GF is a nurse and I got her to look at her and she said to call an ambulance as it looked like an allergic reaction! I call an ambulance, they ask me so many questions - I can't think straight to answer them properly. My GF who is the nurse gets on the phone to talk with a paramedic and thankfully convinces him to send an ambulance. He was suggesting to just drive to the local hospital. Ambulance comes, I have to leave the party and leave DH with all the guests. My SIL comes with me in the ambulance and off we go to Maroondah hospital. All this time, Marley is still smiling and is very calm. The ambulance had 2 women who were absolutely lovely. One checked her over and found no wheezing or problems with her breathing which was a terrific sign. We got to hospital and go straight to paediatrics. We were seen immediately by a fantastic paed Rachel (young Irish lady), who went over her vitals again. By this stage her rash had gone down and was now just blotches rather than covering her whole body. We stay for about 2 hours, they gave her some steroids to settle the rash and stop the itch as anti hystamines aren't recommended for children under 2. We have to wait 1 hour to see if they work. Finally they start working but this whole time my beautiful little girl is still smiling at everyone. We had so many nurses and volunteer staff coming in saying they wanted to see the cute little baby everyone was talking about!!! Finally paed comes back and says we can go. DH comes to pick us up and home we go. My wonderful GF's had cleaned up the house, organised the cutting of the cake, finished the games etc! It was so nice to get home and the house wasn't a disaster. By this stage is was 8.30pm and everyone had gone home.

The cause of her reaction - DH bought the wrong tin of formula!!! She is on a pro-biotic formula called Nan HA Gold2 which has a gold lid. DH accidentally picked up the Nan Gold 2 (no HA) with a silver lid. I didn't even notice until after she had drunk it and saw it on the bench. The paed said all signs point directly at the formula as the reaction started immediately after she drank it. Poor DH was beside himself with guilt and felt terrible. We had to give her the regular formula, but very slowly to make sure she didn't again. Everything was fine, thankfully. The steroids made her very tired and she didn't have her regular afternoon sleep. She is safely tucked away in bed and I have checked on her every 10 minutes so don't know how well I will sleep tonight even though I am exhausted after my very late night last night. As for my birthday girl, she had a great party and didn't really notice us missing!!! My GF took heaps of photos of her cutting the cake and doing the pinata.

I am so relieved that Marley is OK and we are still going to see the paed skin specialist ASAP! I am also grateful to have such wonderful, caring friends who took over and helped finish the party.

Sorry but haven't done any personals (bit slack of me, I know!) and I am really looking forward to falling into bed. Night girls.